If you are new to the forums, you must register a free account before you can post. The forums have a separate registration from the rest of www.chronofhorse.com, so your log in information for one will not automatically work for the other. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are the views of the individual and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of The Chronicle of the Horse.

All I can say is that we recently had to collect a urine sample of an old stallion of ours for the vet and it was next to impossible to catch him at the right time. Too soon and he would stop, too late and its gets well... messy. SO (who is also BM) offered $20 to anyone who could collect it and it still took about 4 days before anyone was able to collect it!

I honestly don't know if a healthy horse can or should ever spill glucose into the urine. It can certainly happen in a healthy, non-diabetic human if the sugar intake is gigantic (at least enough to show up on a dipstick) which means nothing other than awful eating habits or a random over-indulgence.

Personally I am not a big believer, at all, in randomly doing periodic testing for no particular reason. Raises more questions than it answers, often leads one on wild goose chases, and only VERY occasionally points out something important that couldn't be figured out very readily using other means.

Most of the parameters on a urine dipstick are there to look for signs of urinary tract infection (nitrite, leukocytes, blood) and not systemic diseases.

Any diagnostic test is useless without interpretation and without being put into the context of the larger clinical picture. If your horse needed frequent monitoring for whatever reason, it might be cheaper to buy the tests yourself vs sending them away to a lab, but you still would need your vet to guide you on how to react to the results.

So I'm thinking about the stoner/junky who buys his buddy's urine so he can fake his way through a drug test. The horse version: Those who want to use long-acting "designer drugs" that are a USEF no-no would be doing their at-home dosing and drug tests so that they could figure out the cheating dose that would get *just this much* under the limit.

Any diagnostic test is useless without interpretation and without being put into the context of the larger clinical picture. If your horse needed frequent monitoring for whatever reason, it might be cheaper to buy the tests yourself vs sending them away to a lab, but you still would need your vet to guide you on how to react to the results.

I was just curious more that anything else as to whether such a test could somehow be a useful addition to a horse owners medicine cabinet?

What about one of those electronic blood glucose monitors that a person with diabetes might use. Those are relatively cheep. But how would one go about obtaining the tiny drop of blood?

I guess what I keep coming back to is a way of periodically monitoring a horse or pony thought to be at a high risk for developing cushings or IR, and also being sure that the horses diet is optimized for it's particular physiology.

"Supplemental tests that may be useful in suspect cases include measurements of blood glucose and insulin. Many affected horses are insulin resistant and some are significantly hyperglycemic; early recognition and tracking of these abnormalities will aid in rational nutritional management of the disease and provide additional criteria by which to evaluate the horse’s response to treatment."

You can check their sugar with human blood kits, I believe. Normally I think they pierce the lip but I could be referencing very old info in my brain.

Unless one is prepared to react many times a day with diet changes ( pronably difficult or impossible) then a spot-check of blood glucose is sort of like flashing a penlight in a darkened library: you won't see much that is useful. . Perhaps 5-6 measurents a day would be useful, but ouch!

Glycosylated hemoglobin (A1c) tests are how we monitor long-term glucose control in humans, but it's not a fingerstick test (although it seems to me I've heard this is imminent) and I know I've heard a good reason why this is not usually done on horses, but I can't remember it.

I was just reading that they do use the blood meter to measure ketones in cattle, as evidently lactating cows are prone to developing ketosis, one site said to prick the cows tail to get the drop of blood.

Interesting that where there is a need, the use of the meter made for people is what's often used.

Glycosylated hemoglobin (A1c) tests are how we monitor long-term glucose control in humans, but it's not a fingerstick test (although it seems to me I've heard this is imminent) and I know I've heard a good reason why this is not usually done on horses, but I can't remember it.

There is an at-home A1C monitoring kit available at pharmacies. I bought one about 2 years ago just to try it out. I believe it was $20-30 and it contains supplies for 3 tests.

My small animal vet told me they do fructosamines on their diabetic animals but not A1Cs. I think an A1C would be really helpful for animals as it is for people.

Home blood glucose monitors are dirty cheap. Heck, call Lifescan or Bayer or Roche and they'll likely send you one for free. The strips, though, are roughly $1 a piece, so that is where the big expense comes in. The companies know where they're making the big bucks, especially since each machine uses it's own dedicated strip (some companies that I'm aware of have 2 monitors that use the same strip).